Seongcheol
| Seongcheol 성철 性徹 |
|
|---|---|
| Religion | Seon Buddhism |
| Personal | |
| Born |
April 6, 1912 Korea |
| Died | November 4, 1993 (aged 81) |
| Senior posting | |
| Title | Zen Master, Supreme Patriarch of the Jogye Order |
| Seongcheol | |
| Hangul | 성철 |
|---|---|
| Hanja | |
| Revised Romanization | Seongcheol |
| McCune–Reischauer | Sŏngch'ŏl |
Seongcheol (April 6, 1912 – November 4, 1993) is the dharma name of a Korean Seon (Zen) Master. He was a key figure in modern Korean Buddhism, being responsible for significant changes to it from the 1950s to 1990s.
Seongcheol was widely recognized in Korea as having been a living Buddha, due to his extremely ascetic lifestyle, the duration and manner of his meditation training, his central role in reforming Korean Buddhism in the post-World War II era, and the quality of his oral and written teachings.
Born on April 10, 1912 in Korea under the name of Yi Yeongju(이영주), Seongcheol was the first of seven children of a Confucian scholar in Gyeongsang province. He was rumored to have been an exceptionally bright child who read constantly, having learned to read at the age of three, and being proficient enough to read such Chinese classics as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West by age ten. His enthusiasm for reading was such that he once traded a sack of rice for Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as a teenager.
Having read numerous books on philosophy and religion, both Western and Eastern, he reportedly felt dissatisfied, being convinced that these could not lead him to truth. One day, a Seon monk gave Seongcheol a copy of The Song of Attainment of the Tao (Hangul: 증도가, Hanja: 證道歌), a Seon text written by Yeongga Hyeon-gak (永嘉玄覺) in the Tang dynasty. Seongcheol felt as if "a bright light had suddenly been lit in complete darkness," and that he had finally found the way to the ultimate truth.
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